“No, papa; it means that I do not love him.”
The Duke paused and looked into the fire. The expression on his face made the girl ask quickly—
“You are not vexed with me for answering as I did?”
“No, my child, I am not vexed. You were right to answer according to the dictates of your own heart. And yet, had things been a little different with Eustace, I would gladly have seen you his wife.”
A faint glow of colour stole into Bride’s face.
“If things were different with Eustace,” she said very softly, “I think perhaps I could have answered differently. I think about him a great deal. I am grateful for his love, and it hurts me to have none to give in return; but as things now are, I cannot give it to him. He grieves me so often. I know that he would make me miserable if I had let his earnestness carry me away. He might be so great, so noble, so good, but he just fails in everything; and I think he would break my heart if I were his wife.”
The Duke looked earnestly into her earnest eyes.
“It is his views that stagger you? Yes, my child, that is what I feel about him—and them. I will not deny that when first he came to us I had hopes that you and he might learn to love one another. You will never be anything but a rich woman, Bride, even though Penarvon and its revenues must go to Eustace. You will have your mother’s ample fortune, and everything I have to leave independently of the estate. You will have wealth and position; but you are very lonely. You have no near relations, and your mother’s health made it impossible for you to be taken to London and presented and introduced to society. Your life has been a very solitary one, and I have regretted it. I confess I had hopes with regard to Eustace; but when I learnt what manner of man he was, and how he stands pledged to a policy which I can never approve in the abstract, though I will not deny that some of its concrete measures are just and fair, I began to feel differently on the subject. And you have the same feelings, it seems, as I.”
Bride slipped to a footstool at her father’s feet, and leaned upon his knee with his hand still held in hers, and her face turned towards the fire.
“Papa,” she said, “I do not think it is Eustace’s Radical views which repel me, except in so far as they are bound up in those which to me are both sinful and sad. I know that he has the welfare of this land and its people as much at heart as you; that he loves his country and the poor in it as we love them; that he wishes to raise and teach and make them better and happier. I know he would spend his life and his fortune in the cause and grudge it nothing if good could be done. There is a great deal that I admire and love in Eustace; but, ah! I cannot divide into two distinct parts his political views and those other views of his which are so integral a part of his character. To me they seem interlocked at every point, and therefore at every point I see something which repels me—something which I shrink from—something which seems to me untrue and evil in essence, even though on the surface so much may be said for it. I do not know if you understand me. Sometimes I scarcely understand myself—hardly know how to put my thoughts into words; but they are there, always with me; and the more I think, the less I can feel that the two things can ever be altogether divided.”